Absurd Terrorism Theories Invade the Homeland

It is a busy news day, with the absurd propaganda coming fast and furious. Consider:

“CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports that while the northern area of Pakistan, much of which is controlled by local tribes, has always been a stronghold of the Taliban, it’s now also home to a resurgent al Qaeda,” reports CBS News. “Even after five years of operations, what has been achieved? Osama bin Laden is still there, al Qaeda is still there, in fact it is spreading,” CBS reports Lt. General Ali Jan Mohammed Aurakzai as declaring earlier this year.

As usual, CBS’ “reporters,” actually Pentagon script readers, have not bothered to study history—not obscure history, mind you, but the sort of stuff revealed with a ten second Google search.

In October, 2001, Jane’s reported Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) “openly backs the Taliban and fuels the 12-year-old insurgency in northern India’s disputed Kashmir province by ‘sponsoring’ Muslim militant groups and ministering its policy of ‘death by a thousand cuts’ that so effectively drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan and led to their political demise…. The CIA has well-established links with the ISI, having trained it in the 1980s to ‘run’ Afghan mujahideen (holy Muslim warriors), Islamic fundamentalists from Pakistan as well as Arab volunteers by providing them with arms and logistic support to evict the Soviet occupation of Kabul.”

For some reason we are expected to believe Pakistan suddenly changed its tune and now wants to destroy the monster it created. Moreover, we are expected to believe Pakistan is unable to control the Taliban and “al-Qaeda,” the database, in its northern areas, as Lt. General Ali Jan Mohammed Aurakzai would have us believe, never mind former “Pakistani president General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, who was ultimately assassinated along with his ISI chief, expanded the agency’s internal charter by tasking it with collecting information on local religious and political groups opposed to his military regime. Under Gen Zia the ISI’s Internal Political Division reportedly assassinated Shah Nawaz Bhutto, one of the two brothers of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, by poisoning him on the French Riviera in 1985.”

How curious—the ISI’s Internal Political Division is capable of collating thousands of dossiers and even assassinating opponents on the French Riviera but it is entirely helpless when it comes to controlling the Taliban in a primitive backwater of its own nation. In fact, the Taliban and, yes indeed, “al-Qaeda” are ISI-CIA assets and will not be eradicated as they are so eminently useful. George Crile, a veteran producer for the CBS television news show 60 Minutes, described as “an exuberant Tom Clancy-type enthusiast for the Afghan caper” by Chalmers Johnson, characterizes “the U.S. clandestine involvement in Afghanistan” (i.e., creating, financing, and nurturing both the mujahideen and the Taliban) as “the largest and most successful CIA operation in history.” For some reason CBS News would have us believe the CIA decided to chuck its most successful operation. In other words, CBS is staffed with morons and cretins… well, high-paid bootlickers and sycophants, anyway.

Next up, CNN. Due to an unimpeded “radicalization process” straight out of Iraq—where, of course, “al-Qaeda” runs free, sort of like in Pakistan’s wild northern area, and where the dead Osama walks about free, never mind his very late stage renal failure—the CIA-ISI created terror group will “launch an attack in the U.S., according to domestic intelligence agencies,” using “tactics honed in Iraq,” no doubt tactics honed with the help of white guys in Arab garb and wigs.

In a report cobbled together by 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, we learn “that the United States currently is in a heightened threat environment” and “we” (meaning the neocons and their fellow travelers in Congress) “should have concentrated our efforts on al-Qaeda in Afghanistan from the beginning… We must responsibly redeploy our troops out of Iraq’’ and “concentrate our efforts on Afghanistan and the al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked us on 9/11,” never mind a complete paucity of evidence “al-Qaeda” attacked the country on nine eleven or mysteriously and remarkably changed the laws of physics or used voodoo to make NORAD stand down.

“The report says al-Qaeda is gaining strength in the ’safe haven’ it has established in tribal areas in western Pakistan along the Afghan border and is putting in place a stable leadership with top lieutenants,” a “safe haven” especially carved out, as it makes precious little sense to believe the most successful covert CIA operation in history, costing billions of dollars and spanning at least three U.S. administrations, would be stupidly tossed on the junk heap, never mind what Fox News tells you.

Naturally, all of this translates into a threat poised against the homeland. Fran Townsend, White House homeland security adviser, “predicted that al-Qaeda would intensify efforts to achieve the fourth element needed for an attack: the placing of operatives inside the US. Because of this risk, the US was currently in a ‘heightened threat environment,’” even though, of course, the neocons “have no credible information pointing to a specific imminent attack,” in other words, it is safe to venture out and shop. Townsend’s “warning” follows up nicely on the heels of Chertoff’s “gut feeling” that “al-Qaeda was preparing an attack,” as MSNBC reports, or rather script reads.

As should be expected, Congress critters “were quick to look for partisan advantage Tuesday in a new intelligence report describing a ‘persistent and evolving’ terrorist threat to the United States,” according to the New York Times. “Both parties sought to employ the report as a club in their fight over the Iraq War. Democrats said the report underscored the need to shift U.S. resources from the conflict in Iraq toward fighting al Qaeda and its affiliates worldwide. Republicans said the report underscored the importance of remaining steadfast in Iraq and beyond,” in other words, neocons fancy the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) summary as rallying call to invade a growing list of countries and slaughter more Arab and Muslim grandmothers and toddlers. One such threat, according to the NIE, is the “Lebanese militant group Hezbollah,” determined to attack “the homeland over the next three years,” never mind Hezbollah was organized to resist Israeli occupation and check Israel’s habitual desire to kill Lebanese, as it killed no shortage last summer.

As if to remind us the Democrats are on cue, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he believes it is a “travesty that Osama bin Laden remains at large nearly six years after the 9/11 attacks, and that the Bush administration and most congressional Republicans remain stubbornly wedded to a flawed strategy in Iraq.” Reid is wrong on both counts: Osama bin Laden is dead, so he obviously is not “at large,” and the neocon strategy in Iraq is not “flawed,” but rather a great success, as it has destroyed the country and killed around a million Iraqis since early 2003.

But then Iraq and Osama are trick ponies, brought to the gate repeatedly, not that most Americans are aware of this threadbare ploy. Millions to this day, regardless of methodical evidence to the contrary, believe Saddam was in cahoots with Osama.

“The NIE provides an urgent public reminder that our nation faces a persistent and ongoing threat from al Qaeda and other radical jihadist groups,” declared the neocon fellow traveler, Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. As well, according to Hoekstra, the bogus threat of a resurgent “al-Qaeda” and Taliban provides a customized excuse to “change FISA to grant broader leeway for electronic snooping,” no doubt because Osama and Omar are placing so many telephone calls to their deep-freeze sleeper cells in Des Moines, Twin Falls, and other hot beds of imminent terrorism.

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